Tamale, July 6, GNA - Prof. John Kaburise, former Vice-Chancellor of the University for Development Studies (UDS), said the university had improved tremendously under his five-year administration. "The university was in distress and on the verge of collapse with only 900 students and total financial capacity of only two million dollars when I took over.

"But before leaving office on April 7, UDS had about 7,000 students and over 56 million dollars as internally generated fund..." Prof. Kaburise, who was speaking to the Ghana News Agency in an interview in Tamale on Friday, said the amount excluded other income raised by the various faculties of the university and financial and donor support from development partners.

"There has been a substantial infrastructure improvement on the various campuses of the university.

"The Tamale campus of the Medical School is almost completed and from the next academic year, the medical students will be accommodated in the hostel after the CAN 2008", he said.

The 57-year-old Professor said the medical school was threatened with closure when he took over the university on April 8, 2002 but said the UDS had successfully graduated about 80 medical students as doctors. He said the medical students from 2008 would receive their full medical training including clinical studies, entirely at the UDS. He said the Integrated Development Studies (IDS) curriculum of the school had received world acclaim, adding: "This has been endorsed by the former Secretary-General of the United Nations, Mr Kofi Annan". Prof. Kaburise said his administration recognised ICT as the pivotal force for socio-economic development of the country and as such, all the campuses had been networked with local and wide area ICT facilities to promote the learning of ICT.

He mentioned some of the challenges facing the university as poor financial resources, inadequate infrastructure and low staffing capacity.

Prof Kaburise urged the administrators of the school to intensify their fund-raising efforts to be able to address the challenges. 06 July 07